In a world of abundance – how do we know about what is important and not? How do we know what books to read or which Google-hits to click on? Precisely what Orvar Löfgren, professor in European Ethnology, is doing research on. He says that the institutions of the university teach a kind of collective gut feeling.
”Which books should we throw away or just forget about? And how should we know what’s useful or not”.
The question was asked by an academic, but not – which you might think – from the 21st century but from the 17th century. At that time the art of printing books had led to a never before seen expansion in the production of knowledge. Among academics a discussion was going on how this threatening abundance should be handled. The way of reading started to change, from reading out loud and slow to reading fast and quiet.
”Sometimes is good to know that during the 17th century there was also chaos, when we are talking about an abundance of information”, says Orvar Löfgren, professor in European Ethnology and one of the authors of the book Coping With Excess, which will be released in January, and which deals with how man handle the abundance of information.
Nowadays many people talk about the abundance of information and the number of apps, coaches and gadgets that are all going to help you organize the chaos around you. But how does it work when people experience that something is too much and how do we handle it? Orvar Löfgren has studied the university world, in which the flow of knowledge often becomes very clear, trying to find out about it. When students are given a task everybody hits the Internet. But how do you learn to select ”This hit is OK, no, not this one – I click the next”? It is not possible to tell how it is working but it is a kind of system you as a student have to learn.
– Or when you approachyour tutor and the answer is ”You have to read these books” and you ask ”But how about these” and get the answer ”No, those books you can forget about”. We build fences, system and filters, and this process has become so apparent that we don’t think about the fact that we deselect something else.
But from where do these limits come, who is building the fences? Orvar Löfgren has the opinion that the University is teaching us to develop a kind of collective gut feeling about which information is important and which is not. The problem is that this gut feeling varies between institutions and in some cases also between countries. His opinion is that Germany and France, for instance, has different ways of looking at a Ph.D. dissertation.
– In Germany you have to read everything and present a very long introduction while in France it is enough to read maybe three books and then you are requested to focus on your own study. This doesn’t mean that you get different amounts of knowledge in different countries but different countries put their emphasis on different things.
Problems may also show up between institutions when a student decides to change subject. The student could have learnt a certain gut feeling – a feeling of how to write and to cut corners, and then the limits are totally different in the new subject.
– This is particularly noticeable within quality evaluation, when people from different institutions get together in interdisciplinary groups and read theses. Then someone could say ”This was well done”, while somebody else says ”This would never work with us, this I would reject”.
There is a struggle going on within the university about where the limits are set for what is good and acceptable, and it is a very sensitive issue. We have a kind of idea that we are in agreement and that we know what knowledge is and that it’s measureable, even though it’s not always easy. But then the academic quality concept is at stake.
–But wouldn’t it be a problem if everyone within the same subject only learned the same thing?
–Of course, it would become really sad. And as research often rush at those thinking ”Oh, I will choose something totally different” – and suddenly they discover something new. In the acadmic world there are a lot of trodden paths lined with small pennants, marked with ”IMPORTANT”, ”Never mind this”, ”Just browse this book”, ”Turn left”, and then there are people who don’t care, and then something happens. Without it we would just stand still.
At the same time, Orvar Löfgren’s studies show that the way of surviving at university is to cut corners, ignore and forget. Better than to read the books from cover to cover and try to remember everything, is to strive for creative oblivion. At this point the institutional and national ’gut feeling’ eases as it creates limits. ”The way to survive at university is to learn how to say stop. You can’t do research without choosing to omit something and the only way to remember new things is to forget the old”, he says.
But how do we do with the knowledge occupying space physically, what do we throw away and what do we keep and how do we organize everything?
When others are talking about order and simplicity á la feng shui Orvar Löfgren talks research rather than about the creative chaos. When we try to organize our existence, there seems to be a risk that we spend more time on organizing things than using them. If that is the case the studies seem to indicate that it is better to learn to live in chaos. A creative chaos on a desk or on a hard disc can make things meet that was not meant to meet, which can lead to new ideas. And to look for things that have disappeared doesn’t mean a waste of time but resulting in a better overview of your belongings. – On the other hand, if it leads to never finding your things you have gained less. ”It is all about, as always within the research- and student world, to find a balance between chaos and order”, says Orvar Löfgren.
Text: Virve Ivarsson
Illustration: Sara Ottosson
Translation: Lars Jansson
